J-‘s now on her summer break. We’ve been thinking of ways to help her use her summer well. There’ll be time for unstructured play and for hanging out with friends, of course, but it’s also good to help her develop initiative and life skills, fighting the temptations of video games along the way.

Both W- and I are working through summer because we’re saving our vacation days for Kathy’s upcoming wedding, so J- will need to be self-driven. She’s pretty good at dealing with the inevitable what-do-I-do-now moments (and we all get those, if we’re lucky). She often practises piano or ukulele, reads a book, or hangs out with friends. We can help by setting some challenges, nudging her to work on mastery or life skills, and giving her feedback on how she’s doing (such as for writing or math exercises).

Overall plans for the summer:

Read

Practise music

Hang out with friends

Prepare for next school year

Work on life skills

It’s often easier to pick from a list than to think of something to do in the moment, so here are some ideas for things to do:

Physical

Swimming

Biking

Exercising

Running, playing in the park

Mental

Reading a book (critical reading – maybe discussion at dinner?)

Working on reading exercises

Working on math exercises

Going to the library

Creative

Drawing (comics, sketches, etc.) – maybe put together a sketchbook or comic book

Writing notes, stories, and so on

Playing the piano or the ukulele

Visiting the AGO, the ROM, the science centre, etc.

Taking pictures

Exploring arts and crafts (ex: collage, sculpting)

Life skills

Learning how to cook

Making life better: cleaning, tidying, looking for ways to improve, etc.

Volunteering (Free Geek?)

Learning life skills: taking public transit, biking, etc.

Negotiating/persuading

Play

Hang out with friends

Play video games (time-limited?)

Play board games

We’ll encourage her to add to this list, too.

We like the way her school uses rubrics to make it clear what excellence looks like. We’re not planning to use one to grade J- for her summer work – grading summer! what a thought – but it might be useful to work out one with her so that she can self-evaluate how she’s spending her time and so that she can motivate herself to push her limits. W- and I thought about the process first so that we can guide her through planning her own. Here’s the draft W- and I came up with:

Category

1

2

3

4

Physical

Sat on couch all day / stayed indoors

Basic calisthenics

Extended physical activity

Stretching your limits

Mental

Played video games all day / watched TV all day

1 unit of work

2 units of work

3 units of work

Creative

No creative output

Drew / wrote / practised piano/ukulele / etc.

Memorized part of a song / New story/comic/drawing to share

Discussion of work

Life skills

Mess

Cleaned up after self

Cleaned up after cats

Made life better / cleaned up after others

Technology

Played video games or surfed the Internet all day

Practised IT skills (typing, presentations, etc.)

Created something using technology and shared it with us or others

Learned something on your own / experimented with tools

Thinking of ways to build scaffolds for J-‘s learning through these lists of ideas and rubrics for self-evaluation inspires me to make some of these for myself, too.

What would my discretionary-time activities look like?

Physical

Biking

Exercising

Gardening

Mental

Reading a book, maybe blogging notse

Improving development skills

Creative

Drawing – sketches, presentations, etc.

Writing notes, stories, blog posts

Playing the piano

Visiting the AGO, the ROM, the science centre, etc.

Taking pictures

Life skills

Preparing a new recipe or experimenting with a familiar one

Making life better: cleaning, tidying, looking for ways to improve, etc.

In a team-building university orientation, it turned out that my second son was the only in the group who had previously learned canoeing. (He went on two consecutive summers, and decided against attending the third, that would have qualified him as an instructor).

It’s a bit funny to think about children paddling around the outside harbour on the other side of Toronto Island … but it’s a great summer activity where they can learn with others their own age.

http://sachachua.com Sacha Chua

Sounds interesting. J-‘s off the idea of camps now. She likes being able to plan her own time! =) We might look into piano or sewing lessons nearby, though. Thanks for sharing your experiences!

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JohnKitchin Thanks. That matches my current understanding too. It seems like use-package pretty conveniently installs and configures packages. I have seen cask for creating and installing... – Emacs configuration and use-package